At the U.N. Conference on Disarmament Russia and China apparently introduced a draft treaty that would ban weapons in space. At least they said they did. The treaty is nowhere to be found. Of course, it could be just my poor search skills. But one would guess that if Russia and China believe that this is a major initiative they would make some effort to make sure that the text would be readily available. But this is not quite how they see it - the text of Lavrov's statement that introduced the draft contains a draft of the global INF Treaty, not the one on space weapons. The Russian text of the statement, published on the MID web site, does not have anything attached at all. The Chinese Foreign Ministry web site has not been updated for about a week and has nothing about the treaty.

It is hard to say how the new draft is different from the one that Russia and China introduced in June 2002. I would appreciate it very much if someone could find the text of the draft that was submitted today.

This story, I guess, raises a question - if Russia and China do not take their own initiative seriously, then who will?

UPDATE 02/13/08: My thanks to reader NC for sending me the text. It has been posted at reachingcriticalwill.org as well.